Would a Tankless Toilet system be the right fit for your home?

  There always seems to be people out there considering the installation of a tankless toilet system into their homes. It is the draw of a stylish bathroom fixture that would require less space in the bathroom and be much more inconspicuous that has many homeowners looking at the tankless toilet and thinking it might be a viable option. Before making a decision about something so important in your home, it is important to have a decent understanding of the issues involved in opting to go with a tankless toilet and how it differs from the standard tank toilet.

  Obviously, with the regular standard tank toilet, it is the manipulation of gravity that allows the toilet to function to exspectations. Put simply: it is gravity that allows water in the toilet bowl to be exchanged for the water in the toilet tank. Pretty straight forward, right? Well, because there isn't any real tank involved in the flush process with the tankless toilet alternative it has to function on some fundamentally different principles of design. The total lack of any tank means that there are obviously less restrictions on the design of the toilet, allowing it to be more fully customized to fit the overall asthetic of the bathroom it is intended for. As well, there is much more freedom to choose exactly where you want to have the toilet fixture located in your bathroom. However, the primary idea of having the wastes or effluents removed through an open valve to the pipelines below and away from the household premises to the ajoining sewer network is still a fundamental principal that has to be addressed.

  At this point you might find yourself wondering just what is the basic concept behind the function of a tankless toilet?

  The basic concept that we are dealing with here is that the tankless toilet works using both volume and pressure to bring the clean flush-water in right from the water pipes of the household - whether it might be a house or an apartment building where they have been installed - and into the recently emptied toilet bowl. The bowl of the tankless toilet allows only a predetermined amount of water to enter and then closes off the valve.  this completes the flushing process. If the flushing mechanism is properly functioning then an overflowing toilet bowl should never really be any concern. The tankless toilet makes use of a very powerful pump mechanism that is powered by electricity.  It is the electric pump that produces the necessary pressure for the flushing action to occur. The tankless toilet actually refills quite quickly after being flushed, I would argue that this is one of the main benefits of the tankless system. The flushing mechanism on the tankless toilet is pretty easy to activate since it only requires one to push a button to activate the pump and make the toilet flush. The pump mechanism is located within the actual toilet bowl itself.  This is standard design, but what does vary is the means by which the waterpipe connects upto the toilet bowl in the bathroom. There are a variety of design options or approaches to choose from here that contribute to the increased freedom of layout and asthetics or design that is a strong selling point of the tankless toilet. You can opt to have the toilet located in a more traditional location, such as up against the bathroom wall with the pipes connecting from the wall to the toilet bowl, or a less conventional set up, such as locating the bowl away from a wall and having the waterpipes connect up to it by having them either come up from the floor and to the toilet or coming from the wall, across the floor and to the toilet. With any of these set ups, the pipes will be eventually connecting up with the interior plumbing of the residence.

  It seems that there is some discrepancy out there between what is considered to be the standard width of pipe needed for any standard tankless toilet and the actual recommended width of pipe. Many manufacturers of tankless toilets claim that a 1/2 inch width of pipe is sufficient for a tank-less toilet, yet many of those who have experience in the installation of tankless toilets will tell you that a 1 inch width of pipe is really what is needed to make sure that your toilet has enough volume and pressure to fill quickly. Without sufficient width in the pipe, it might be that your bathroom's toilet does not have enough pressure or volume to refill quickly enough and instead needs to continue the flushing process for an extended period of time to satisfactorly fill the bowl.  Having a tankless toilet that takes a prolonged amount of time to refill after the initial flush really kind of defeats one of the major purposes of having it installed in the first place.

  I mentioned before that there are reasons that can deter potential customers from opting to go with the tankless toilet system for their homes. It is true that there are certain aspects of the tankless system that have to be taken into coinsideration. The tankless toilet system does require a certain type of water pipeline and if this is non-existant in the home when the toilet is being installed, then it will be necessary to have such pipes installed as a part of your home plumbing system. For a newly constructed home this might not be too much of an added expense considering that the pipes would be part of the overall construction framework, however to have the required pipes installed into a pre-existing  residence could mean a substantial cost for the necessary renovations to the pipelines and plumbing of the home.  This alone is an obvious deterrant for many considering a tankless toilet system for their home.

  The power source for a home tankless toilet system can be another potential issue or area of concern for those considering its installation; having a toilet system in your residence that requires a electric power source for its flushing action means that your toilet is pretty much at the mercy of your local area's power supply. To be blunt, this means that any time that the power supply to your home is cut off or disconnected, your toilet would not be able to properly flush. I cannot be sure if a temporary power generator would be an adequate safeguard against such an eventuality, it might be an answer but that is a pretty significant potential problem with your system that one would want to know the  best ways of dealing with before it should become a clear and present concern that you find yourself having to deal with. If there are any reliability issues with the power in your local area, then you might have to reconsider whether or not a tankless toilet system would actualy be an appropriate alternative for your home. Any ongoing uncertainty about the availability of the toilet in your home is a potential ongoing source of frustration that you and your family could probably do without.